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Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Shorthanded goals continue to be a thorn in the Devils’ side and a sensitive subject for head coach Pete DeBoer.

The Devils have allowed an NHL-worst 10 shorthanded goals this season and are 3-7-0 in the games in which they’ve allowed one. No other team in the league has given up more than five shorthanded goals this season.

The latest came in the Devils’ 4-1 loss to the Rangers on Tuesday. Ilya Kovalchuk was unable to keep the puck in at the left point, which led to a 2-on-1 and Carl Hagelin’s shorthander with 5:18 remaining that upped the Rangers’ lead to 3-1.

The shorthanded goals have been one of DeBoer’s least favorite subjects to talk about all season. When I asked him today if there was any thought to playing two defensemen on the points for a while just to stabilize things and cut down on the shorthanded goals, he became defensive.

“We had two defensemen on the ice two shorthanded goals ago,” DeBoer said. “If you’re insinuating that Kovy is responsible for the shorthanded goals, which is the direction you’re going...”

I interrupted and noted that Patrik Elias was at left point for some of the shorthanded goals too. Then, I asked again if using another defensemen there for a while might at least provide more stability.

“I don’t think it’s stability,” DeBoer said. “If you go back and look at the shorthanded goals and the shorthanded chances, defensemen have been either more or equally as much responsible for the shorthanded problems we’ve had. So, I don’t think that’s the solution. We, obviously, aren’t sticking our head in the sand and ignoring it. We’re looking at different problems, but when you go back and you look at them, our defensemen have been equally as responsible. Look at the shorthanded goals.”

DeBoer said in watching the shorthanded goals again there have been some mental errors.

“Sure, we’ve turned some pucks over we didn’t need to turn over,” DeBoer said. “We’ve been stripped a few times. The young kid has made a few mistakes, (Adam) Larsson. But, again, it’s been all over the map. There’s not one thing. If I thought taking a forward off the point on the power play would fix all those problems, then we would do it. That hasn’t been the case. It’s been a multitude of different issues from all kinds of different people and we, obviously, have to get it fixed.”

As DeBoer noted, the Devils had two defensemen on the point for Kris Versteeg’s shorthanded goal in Florida on Dec. 13. Versteeg stripped defenseman Henrik Tallinder of the puck at the red line on that one to go in on the shorthanded breakaway.

Jesse Winchester’s tying shorthanded goal with five seconds left in regulation against Ottawa on Dec. 8 was also different because the Senators had the goalie pulled for an extra attacker and each team had a man in the penalty box. That was hardly a typical power play, but the Devils did have two defensemen on in that situation.

The first shorthanded goal the Devils allowed on Oct. 29 in Dallas came when they had the goaltender pulled for a sixth attacker and were pressing for a tying goal.

That still leaves seven shorthanded goals against, however, that came when the Devils had a forward at the left point – four with Kovalchuk there and three with Elias.

The power play has been a problem for the Devils for much of the last two and a half seasons. It tailed off in the second half of the 2009-10 season and other than a few spurts has been consistently been a struggle. This season, the Devils are scoring on just 13.3 percent of their power plays (16-for-120), which puts them 27th in the NHL.

Still, DeBoer said today, “It doesn’t have me worried.”

“I believe it’s fixable without a major overhaul,” he said. “I think we have the personnel in place now with (Kurtis) Foster here. We just have to simplify things and get back to some basics.”

In case you were wondering, last season, when the Devils often used two forwards on the points -- Kovalchuk and Brian Rolston -- they allowed eight shorthanded goals, which tied them for eighth worst in the NHL.

***After watching the video again of Tuesday’s game, DeBoer said there were still a lot of things to like about the way the Devils played.

“In a good way, I liked how we played,” he said. “I thought that we got a 60-minute effort. There’s that stretches of the game, there’s things you can fix. We have to, obviously, find a goal on the power play and keep the shorthanded goal out, but we generated more chances than them, more shots than them, more zone time than them and didn’t win. You don’t get points in the standings for that, but from a purely coaching point of view we did a lot of good things.”

About

TOM GULITTI has covered the New Jersey Devils for The Record since 2002. Prior to that, he covered the New York Rangers for four years. Gulitti joined The Record in 1998 after six years at The North Jersey Herald News. He graduated from Binghamton University in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts in Rhetoric-Literature.